agp vs pci

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dafunkmon

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if agp was created to be specifically for video cards then why did they go back to the old format of pci?
 
:( It is PCIE, which has bigger bandwidth and can read and write at the same time, which = better.
 
Basically, it's like CPU's. They change the interface over time. Like Intel went from socket 478 to 775, video cards in general went from AGP 8X to PCI-E 16X. However, you can still buy AGP cards. But you're better off with PCI-E
 
What I don't understand is why AGP isn't better, I mean it connects to the northbridge right and PCIE connects to the southbridge...
I realise PCIE is a higher specification bus but wht can't they make a much faster AGP bus that takes advantage of the fact that its on the northbridge?
 
cause... they just abondond agp.. they coulda made it plenty better.

I am still stuck with agp and i feel i dont need to get pcie for a while.
 
AGP was 'abondond' as you say... Sure, there aren't as MANY products available for AGP as there are for PCI-e, but there are 1600 Pro, 7800 GS...

I THINK the term you were searching for is 'AGP is being phased out'.... It is the nature of the business... If there is progress to be made, why stick with older technology when the businesses selling the new stuff are going to take off, leaving you behind....

Look at CPU's as someone said... They are at 90nm process (AMD) and 65nm process (Intel) right now... The process gets smaller, sockets change, CPU's become MORE powerful while drawing LESS power & creating LESS heat....
 
What I don't understand is why AGP isn't better, I mean it connects to the northbridge right and PCIE connects to the southbridge...
I realise PCIE is a higher specification bus but wht can't they make a much faster AGP bus that takes advantage of the fact that its on the northbridge?
There is no south bridge on AMD64 systems. There is only one chipset, no north and south bridge. The north bridge was completely done away with with the advent of the on-die memory controller.

The bus that the PCI-E information flows through is part of the LDT bus which is significantly faster than the bus the AGP runs on. The AGP on Nf3 boards where it's using the LDT bus is limited by the fact that, not only is the bus slower compared to nf4 boards, but that AGP's design in itself is limited to the 8x.

PCI-E on the newer bus, is a more efficient designed made specifically for this newer bus system as well.
 
What about on an intel system that dosn't have an LDT? Like, say conroe.
 
What about on an intel system that dosn't have an LDT? Like, say conroe.
Well they've modified theres to accomodate DDR2 right? That was their original answer to the AMD back in in the socket A days I believe. Then of course with AMD's advent of the on-die memory controller and LDT bus it was getting better than Intels system which had previously been better than AMD's....now Intel is just putting up an awesome new CPU but their bus system still works the same.

IMO, their bus system is still inferior and they should work on that and would probably really increase their performance, but of course the conroe does dang good on it's own so imagine if they DID improve their bus.

Either way though, in terms of the graphics card, I'm sure they had to do some modifications to the chipset on the boards using PCI-E slots. Buuuuut, honestly for Intel boards I'm not all that sure, never thought about it before. All I could think of is that they just modified the route that the bus took with AGP to allow for the extra bandwidth of PCI-E.
 
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